


full of wise saws and modern instances

by evocates



Series: all the men and women merely players [2]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda, Historical RPF
Genre: (Some of the fic; not all), A dynamic so messed up that it must by necessity be unnamed, Canonical Character Death, Child Death, Gen, Historical Inaccuracy, POV Second Person, Rating for themes and subject matter, Semi-Canonical Character, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: But it was not the way the child walked that made her grip the handle of her fan until the ivory pressed against her bones through skin and flesh. It was the child’s eyes.They were wide, and blank, and staring straight ahead, unfocused. They were the precise shape and colour of her father’s; of her own.A story of a mistress and her slave. A story of sisterhood.Martha Wayles Jefferson and Sally Hemings in the 1700s.





	full of wise saws and modern instances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dawittiest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawittiest/gifts).



> For fightbackfic, dawittiest requested for Sally and Martha’s dynamics in canon era. She specified that the dynamics should be “kind of like in _fever_ except more fucked up.” I do my best to deliver. (When did I get a reputation as the person who writes fucked up things? Is it because of _fever_?)
> 
>  **Warnings:** Heavy depiction of slavery, depiction of child death, historical death, and a dynamic so messed up I can’t actually name it. The rating is entirely for the themes and subject matter instead of any violent or explicitly pornographic content. Oh, and there are parts in second-person POV, too. 
> 
> Characterisation of Martha Jefferson is taken partly from the musical _1776_ and history (Patty _is_ her historical nickname). Sally’s characterisation is, as per usual, inspired by Sandra Seaton’s [_From the Diary of Sally Hemings_](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrarchive;idno=act2080.0040.402;view=text;rgn=main;xc=1;g=mqrg) and _The Hemingses of Monticello_. Their appearances are not according to history, which is why the fic is listed in _Hamilton_ as well as historical RPF. Despite all that, the timeline is historically inaccurate.
> 
> Again, if anything discomfits or triggers you, or makes you feel things you don’t want to when enjoying fandom, please click the back button immediately. 
> 
> Title is adapted from Shakespeare’s _As You Like It,_ Act II Scene VII. Part of the famous soliloquy that starts with “All the world’s a stage.” (Yes, this fic can be said to be a sort of far-off prequel set in the same world as _this strange eventful history_.)

_1777_

_  
The first time you meet her, you think: she’s beautiful._

_You are only four years old, but you have been made old before your time; born with a soul aged by the rusting chains that hang around your neck, trailing behind you and stunting your very first steps. You are living in the house of the man you are not allowed to call father – surrounded by things that gleam like the bars of a cage and stink like rotting fruits – but you have been born with eyes that seek light instead of darkness; born with hands aching for soft warmth that isn’t sun-scorched cotton flowers or tobacco leaves from the unending fields._

_She is beautiful like no one you have ever seen. Her hair is curled, but not close-cropped like your brothers’ or tied back into a painful bun like your mother’s and yours. She has bright eyes that have no lines of pain beside them. And her hands…_

_Maybe you will have hands like hers if you are allowed those white silk gloves that make the brown glow golden._

_Her name is Martha. Martha, the name of not-father’s lost first wife. Martha, the name of your sister. Martha, the name transmogrified into Patty with sweet affection instead of rough hands that rip dignity from throats._

_Martha, who takes you away from the glittering metal of a plantation named the Forest. Martha, who places you behind bars carved out of the thorns of roses._

_The first time you meet her, you think: she’s beautiful._

_Years later, when your hands have bled and bled and your heart drained and drained, when you have nothing left but hollowly echoing words, you realise…_

_You realise._

__*

Thomas was fidgeting with his gloves again. Tugging on the fingertips before pulling them back to fit, rolling the pearl buttons at the wrist around and around until the threads were surely strained to breaking.

Patty smacked the back of his hand with her fan. When he stared at her, eyes wide with betrayed hurt, she hid her smile behind the open blades.

“The author of the Declaration of Independence, made nervous by an old man,” she teased. “If only your adoring public can see you now.”

“My skills lie not with my tongue, but my pen,” Thomas grumbled. He sank backwards into the cushions of the couch, stretching out his long legs while keeping his gaze on her. “As you can tell, I am missing my pen, and hence my courage.” 

There was a retort on the tip of her tongue, but at that moment, the door opened and Thomas immediately got to his feet. He was still tugging on his gloves, and Patty hid her smile as she stood up to greet her father as well.

But when she turned, it was not her father who immediately caught her attention. It was _her_.

The child could not be more than four years old; five, at the very most. She walked beside Patty’s father by lifting her legs from the knee and planting her bare foot in front of her with each step, as if marching indoors.

Inanely, Patty thought of the news from Britain, of there being toymakers who could make strange and wonderful dolls that could be wound and released to walk on their own. The newspapers clippings she had saved talked about how those dolls moved unnaturally, and though they were marvels, the sight of them sent a creep down the spines of any and all witnesses.

But it was not the way the child walked that made her grip the handle of her fan until the ivory pressed against her bones through skin and flesh. It was the child’s eyes.

They were wide, and blank, and staring straight ahead, unfocused. They were the precise shape and colour of her father’s; of her own.

Having lived her life with her father until she had married Barthurst Skelton, Patty was no fool. She had been brought up in the South, too, and lived all of her life within the borders of Virginia. She knew what it was that men sometimes did with slaves. She had seen the woman that her father had taken to be his concubine; had met the sons that she had borne for him, all of them bearing her name and her chains.

This child had that woman’s hands: stiff by her sides, pressed against her thighs. Her fingers were so straight that Patty’s own ached with sympathy.

Thomas was bowing beside her. Patty tapped his shoulder with her fan, finally lifting her eyes to meet her father’s.

“Why have you brought that child with you, sir?”

“Her name is Sally,” her father said, which was not an answer at all. He walked forward and took a seat on the plush armchair that had been for long years his favourite in this particular sitting room. “Sally, will you get us some tea?”

The child – _Sally_ , Patty reminded herself – made a bow. “Yes, Master Wayles,” she said, and her voice was pitched at the perfect level to be easily ignored and heard at the same time. She turned and walked out of the door.

“Sit, sit,” Patty’s father waved at the two of them. He gave her the smile he had always reserved solely for her – crooked and wide enough to show the missing teeth at the edge – when she and Thomas obeyed. “She is your wedding gift, Patty.”

Patty’s voice caught in her throat. Beside her, she heard Thomas’s do the same.

“Does that mean that we have your blessings, sir?” Thomas asked. 

Her father threw his head back and laughed. “Your reputation precedes you, Mister Jefferson,” he said, lips twitching at the side. “Not merely your skill with a pen that has now taken the colonies by storm, but also the land you have inherited from your father and the house you are now planning to build upon it.”

At that moment, the child returned. She held a tea tray that was thrice her width in her hands. Patty was almost relieved to hear the porcelain tremble on the silver; a doll, she was sure, would not show such weakness.

“Come here, Sally,” her father instructed once the child had placed the tray on the table in front of them. When she made to turn, he shook his head. “No, no, pour some tea for Mister Jefferson and Patty first, and _then_ you come here.”

Sally made another small bow before she did as she was bid. When she lifted the cup and its saucer, with the silver teaspoon tucked perfectly neatly underneath the cup’s handle, to Patty, Patty had to stifle another shudder at the sight of those blank, blank eyes. She took a sip of the tea without tasting it, and quickly placed the cup and saucer down in favour of her fan again.

“She’s well-mannered, and learns quickly,” Patty’s father said. He beckoned towards Sally, but didn’t look the girl in the eye as he caught her caught and nudged her mouth open, turning her body towards them so they could see her teeth. “There will be some awkwardness with her teeth when she grows older, but hopefully she’ll remember her training about speaking with her mouth closed.”

He pats her between her shoulders, shoving her forward. “Show them, Sally.”

“Mister Jefferson,” Sally said obediently. Turning from Thomas to Martha, she bowed again. “Mrs Skelton.”

“A man like you, Mister Jefferson,” Patty’s father was saying, “should have some well-mannered slaves in your household. I’m certain that you have some, of course, but I hope that you will accept Sally before your formal marriage to my daughter.”

“She is a gift?” Thomas asked. There was, Patty noted distantly, a tremulous note in his voice.

“Oh no,” her father shook his head, amusement clear in his voice. “Sally is part of the Hemings, and all of them belonged to Patty’s mother. They will rightfully be hers, and yours, after my death.” 

He reached out and placed a hand on Sally’s head. The child did not flinch. “But you are an important man who will have many guests, sir. Having Sally in your household will be useful as a constant source of entertainment.”

Snapping her fan open, Patty covered her mouth before she asked, “But if there is Sally, then what will my role be, sir?” When her father’s head jerked upwards, she forced her lips to curl up – hopefully adding some of the twinkle into her eyes that he had always said that he liked – and continued, “Is it not a hostess’s role to entertain?”

“It is the hostess’s role to direct the entertainment,” her father said. The amusement in his voice had increased, and Patty breathed a sigh of relief. “Even your fingers will tire after hours on the pianoforte.”

Something surely showed on her face, because he added, sounding impatient now, “You can train her to play the piano, if you’d really rather not have her do tricks for entertainment.”

 _Why are you trying so hard to get rid of this girl, Papa_? Patty wanted to ask, but her father’s good humour at her questioning and prodding had a limit, and she knew that she would far exceed it with such a question.

“Monticello is yet to be finished,” Thomas said, sounding hesitant and unsure. “We are planning a wedding on the first day of the new year – upon your approval, of course – but the main house will not be ready until months after.”

Slowly, her father cocked his head to the side. “Spit it out, Jefferson,” he waved a hand.

“We will not have space for her,” Thomas said, in a rush.

“No _space_!” her father barked a laugh. He grabbed the child by the shoulder and dragged her over. Patty watched as her ankle turned into an unnatural angle as she tried her best to not stumble or trip. “She is very small. I’m sure that she can fit into the closet of a _cottage_.”

 _Are you trying to get her away because she looks like how I used to_? Patty wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, and she banished it immediately. Her hand tightened on her fan as she placed the closed blades on top of Thomas’s knees.

“In any case, we thank you for the gift,” she said hurriedly. “Unfortunately, we will only be able to take her after the wedding.”

Her father opened his mouth, but she leaned towards him and continued speaking in as earnest a tone as she could manage: “I’m sure that Sally would like to spend more time with her family as well.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Patty saw _something_ flash in the corner of the child’s eyes. She took a deep breath. “She is but a child, Papa.”

She had not used that term on him ever since her marriage to Barthurst; she had become a woman, then, and had no room in her life for childishness. And she felt guilt settle inside her, just slightly, when her father’s eyes brightened up immediately.

“Of course,” he nodded. After a moment, he chuffed under his breath, and raised an eyebrow towards Thomas. “That is a far more convincing argument than yours, Mister Jefferson.”

Thomas, luckily, had enough courage to not tremble as he nodded. “She teaches me a great deal,” he said.

“Then it’s settled,” her father said. He nudged the child on the spot between her shoulderblades again, this time the gesture clearly meant as a dismissal. “You were talking about a wedding during the first day of the new year?”

“Yes,” Thomas said. He leaned forward.

Patty knew that she should take interest; weddings were, after all, considered to be women’s business more than men’s. But she had done this before, while it was Thomas’s first time, so she would indulge him with regards to his desires.

At least, that was what she told herself.

It was easier than to admit that her eyes could not leave the child as she walked away – marching too stiffly again. Easier than to admit those small fingers engraved at the back of her eyelids, trembling as they held a too-heavy tea tray.

This girl looked like her. It should not be possible, and yet it was true.

Patty picked up her cup of tea. It slid down her throat, heavy and thick and far too sweet. 

The child had added too much sugar.

***

_1782_

__

_On the day that you leave your not-father’s cage, your mother instructs you to keep your hands soft and tender. It will remind you, she tells you, and does not say what it will remind you of._

_You have failed your mother: your hands have turned rough. You have been kept away from the fields but lye-choked water scours skin as much as the harsh sun does. Her hands are the ones perpetually gloved._

_You, old-souled, have learned to watch her. You watch him, too, as he is always beside her._

_She likes to stand in the pavilion he bought for her with flowers braided in her hair and a parasol made of cloth woven with such tenderness that the sunlight still passes through the cloth, and she smiles at him. She sets her long, gloved fingers on the pianoforte that has come from your not-father’s cage, and she plays for him whenever he bides for her to. She sings for him, her voice sweet and clear like a bell’s._

_He dresses her in silks that you know, from peeps at the ledgers, that he can barely afford. He builds a house for her with high windows made from glass that has travelled as long as your ancestors surely did. He gives her a garden, and sets up a pavilion made out of wrought metal that resembles the vines and thorns of the blossoms she so loves._

_Does she see? Does she realise?_

_The beauty he has surrounded her is nothing more than cages. But she flourishes within these golden bars, and her eyes cannot see without glass distorting the light for her. Her hands can touch nothing while bare. The silk has become her skin._

_Still, you think, helpless and hopeless: we are sisters. Half of the blood in your veins flows from the same source as hers, but that is not why you are sisters._

_Birds in cages together must recognise each other._

_But she does not see. She does not want to see._

_You know this._

__*

The child’s hands were still too small for the proper chores of the house, and the white housekeeper – an annoyingly loud and shrill Irish woman – complained that she was always underfoot when Patty had assigned her to work at the kitchens. She also was close enough to darling little Patsy’s age to serve as a playmate instead of a nurse.

It was a mere matter of necessity, and the inability to return Sally to Patty’s father plantation, that led Patty to assign the child to be her personal maid. It had, she told herself over and over again, nothing to do with the shape of those fingers that were now trailing through her hair.

Now she found her own words to be empty, and she regretted her own kindness. Better to have left Sally to the mercies of the kitchens, or to send her to the fields, than to have her small fingers here tangling in her hair, the colour of her skin so similar to a pair of even tinier ones that Patty could see nothing but ghosts.

“Stop,” she said. She reached back and closed her hand around Sally’s wrist. The brush clattered to the ground as she felt the fragile bones grinding together beneath her grip. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”

Sally did not say a word. She merely nodded, bending to pick up the brush. Her hair had grown out even further, past her shoulders in a riotous mess of curls that could barely be tamed, and Patty’s hands trembled at the sight of it. She tore her eyes away from the girl, gazing out of one of the windows.

But all she saw was the tiny marker in the distance. Marble that Thomas had bought with expenses that they could barely spare – Monticello had yet to turn enough of a profit for them to live without worry of debts – to be laid over a grave barely the width of two hands placed side by side. She knew the words carved into the stone; knew the chill of it against her skin, the cold that never left despite the acrid summer air and the hot sun overhead. 

Her hand flew downwards, cupping her abdomen. Her womb was barely a month empty, still bloated, and her breasts hung heavy with milk that had no mouth to it take from her. Her fingers trembled and she gripped tighter onto the muslin nightgown.

She had been so happy when Peter had been born. She and Thomas had two living, healthy daughters, and she should be glad for them; she _was_ , but here was the son she had borne him, a son who would have his brilliance; a son who would grow up to have hands large enough to hold their new nation in his hands, and allow Thomas to rest with ease in his later years.

But Peter was born sickly. Pale-cheeked with bird-like bones that showed through his too-thin skin, and blue-and-green veins like careless scrawls all over his body. They had called for the doctors, pleading with them, but despite all of the doctors’ treatments, Peter stopped crying one day, and never started again.

When she opened her eyes, Sally was still standing there. Her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes cast down. Her skin, the colour of dry, untilled soil, caught the sunlight, nearly shimmering with sweat in her heavy cotton uniform. 

Peter would have had skin like that if he had been born healthy.

“Tell Mister Jefferson,” her voice trembled despite herself; Papa had taught her to never show weakness in front of a slave. She cleared her throat. “Tell Mister Jefferson that I do not wish to leave my rooms today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sally said. Patty turned away, dabbing at her own eyes and cheeks with the edges of her gloves.

But Sally’s footsteps stopped at the doorway, and Patty did not hear it open. She spent a moment wondering if Sally was having trouble with the weight of the wood when Sally said, “Please do not grieve for him so fervently, ma’am,” Sally said. “He is in a better place now.”

Patty whirled around. Her eyes narrowed. She said, “What?”

“Little master Peter, ma’am,” Sally said. She took one step behind her and turned around, her movements still as jerky as a wind-up doll’s. When Patty continued staring at her, silent, she shifted from foot to foot.

“It is what the pastor said, ma’am,” she said, her voice so soft now that Patty had to strain to hear her. “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart. The righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” She bit her lip. “I do not know the chapter and verse, ma’am.”

“Chapter fifty-seven, verse one,” Patty said, her mouth moving without her consent. She cocked her head at Sally. “You were eavesdropping on the service.”

Sally shook her head, but she did not protest. Belatedly, Patty remembered that Sally had been there too; that it was Sally’s shoulder that she had leaned upon as some of the other house slaves had placed the tiny wooden coffin down into its grave.

She waved the thought away. It was unimportant.

“Are you…” Patty swallowed. “Are you trying to _comfort_ me, child?”

“You are in pain, ma’am,” Sally said. She still had not lifted her eyes. “I do not like to see you so.”

“Ah,” Patty said. She leaned back against her chair. Something strange and cold was creeping up her spine, seeping into her nerves. Her fingers twitched within the confines of her gloves, and she rubbed the tips of the two of them together. “And that is enough to excuse you for interfering matters that are far beyond your understanding?”

Finally, Sally tipped her head up.

Those familiar dark eyes had turned alien long ago. Papa’s eyes had never looked like this: blank and empty, with a shade at the edges that reminded Patty of those of dogs in cruel masters’ households, cowering in the corner waiting for another blow.

Sally had the eyes of someone who had lived in such endless terror that it had stained her eyes and dulled the colour. Sally’s eyes were a slave’s eyes.

“These matters are not beyond me, ma’am,” Sally said. There was nothing harsh in her tone, nothing rebellious. There was no command or demand, either. There was only an echoing emptiness, as if Sally was no more than a doll that managed to replicate – badly – not just a woman’s steps, but her words as well. 

“It isn’t?” Patty raised an eyebrow. She wanted to feel foolish for conducting a conversation like this: not only with a slave, but a slave _child_ , when she was a woman of her own right and the mistress of the plantation, in fact. “Pray tell me: what do you know of the grief of a parent upon losing their child?”

Her fingers tapped on her knee, and she leaned forward. “Have you had dalliances that you have not informed me about?”

Girls like her were different from Patty; they would spread her legs for anyone, no matter the age of their paramour or their own. There was something in the blood of slave women that gave them such insatiable libidinous cravings; the same component that gave the males a propensity for violence beyond anything that those civilised were capable of.

She had thought Sally to be different. With all of her father’s praises, she had thought Sally to be capable of more. It was a thought, she knew, Thomas would chide her gently for even as he praised her kindness.

“No, ma’am,” Sally said. She took a breath, her hands clenching at her sides. The gesture was so easy to read, so _familiar_ , that Patty almost made the mistake of looking at her and seeing their shared blood again.

“But your pain is one I know well nonetheless,” she said. Then, she added, as if as an afterthought: “Ma’am.” 

At that, Patty could not help but laugh. She supposed she should be thankful to Sally for that; she had not laughed since Peter’s death.

” _How_?”

Sally lifted her gaze. Her head was still lowered, but those eyes had changed. For a moment – only a very, very brief moment – Patty was reminded of her father. There was a familiar determination creased around the edges; the same determination that took Patty’s father from being a newly-emigrated English man to one of the Virginian plantation elites.

She opened her mouth, but Sally was already speaking:

“I know the loss of my mother and siblings, ma’am,” she said. Her voice had gone blank again. “Though the cause is very different, I reckon the pain is much of the same.”

Patty’s breath caught in her throat.

During these five years she had been living in Monticello, Sally had not once mentioned the mother and brothers who had been left behind at The Forest. She had not seen them since then; the distance between Patty’s maiden home and Thomas’s estate was far too great for walking, especially with a child’s short legs, and Thomas was not enough of a fool to hire a carriage for a slave. 

Though Patty had never been to a slave auction herself, Thomas had told her about those he had witnessed. It had taken her much wheedling and begging before he would tell her, but she had heard: the cries of mothers as their children were taken away from them; the screams of the children and their flailing arms as they reached out desperately for their parents.

Even here, in Monticello, there were slaves who were parted from their families; men whose wives and children belonged to a different plantation, and women who had borne children to men who were not sold to Monticello along with them.

Patty looked into those empty eyes, and she knew that Sally spoke the truth.

She raised a finger to the door. To her shame, she found that it trembled. 

“Get out,” she said.

Sally lowered her head. She resembled a wind-up doll again, this time a badly-made one with her movements far too jerky. She turned around.

The _thud_ of the closing door echoed in the room, beating against the glass. Patty stared down at her hands. She picked up the brush from where Sally had placed it on the corner of her toilette, and stared blankly at the bristles.

She knew that slaves loved their families. Even animals were capable of familial love – bears and wolves were said to turn even more ferocious when their cubs were threatened. The love between a parent and child was one of God’s greatest gifts, and one that He gave freely to all living creatures.

Yet for Sally to have understood… It could not be. It _was_ , but it should not be.

Patty stood up abruptly. Her chair scraped against the polished wooden floorboards of her rooms, but she was deaf to it as she headed to the desk. She pulled out a pot of ink and sat down. She knew why it was that Sally should not understand.

Dipping her quill into the ink, she began, _Dear Papa_ …

She would ask her father to send over the Hemings. Sally’s mother, and her siblings – however many there were – would come to live here, at Monticello. Depending on the look of them and Thomas’s whim – and perhaps, a little, their existing skills – they would either work in the field or in the house. Perhaps, if Patty was fortunate, one of them would develop a skill for brewing beer; she had been thinking of setting up a small brewery on the plantation for such a purpose anyway.

Here was the difference: Peter was lost to Patty forever, but Sally could still have her family returned to her. Patty would have her family returned to her.

Then Sally would not be able to claim that she understood the pain of loss. Not anymore.

***

_1783_

__  
  
_There is a particular bush in her garden that she adores._

_It is a rose bush, flowering blooms that Nature dictated should be white. But once, two years ago, the flowers that unfurled from the buds had red on the edges, as if the bloom had been plucked, dipped in blood, and welded back to the stem again. She exclaimed over the blooms, then, and took terrible pains to try to keep the soil in which its roots sit the same._

_The bush bloomed roses of that colour three more times. But the flowers wilted so quickly during the second and third that you decided then that the red on the edges had not been the blood of others that the petals had been dipped into, but the blood of the vines and leaves themselves._

_On the fourth year, the bush gives roses with edges so red that they gleam like fresh blood beneath the sunlight._

_Now, it is the fifth year, and the bush gives only white roses again. It is fitting, you think. She would be disappointed, but it is fitting._

_For the bush rests outside her window, its vines climbing the trellises of the grills. Sharp lye and river-stench – of doctors, of leeches – are surely enough to drain it of colour. To drain it of blood._

_You care for the bush, now. You are the only person who will, you know; the only person who remembers its existence. The mistress of the house has taken so ill that she is surely on her deathbed, after all; what time has anyone for roses? What time has anyone for anything?_

_The master, caught in his desperation and half-born grief, has left his overseers unchecked. The tears he sheds are mirrored by his slaves; the scores in his heart show bright and true on the backs of his slaves, red as the edges of that bush._

_But your mother and brothers are spared from the claws of that cruel mirror, so you try to not care._

_(They are here now, in this wide, sprawling estate so different and yet so similar to your not-brothers. They are here by the wishes and boons of the mistress of the house, you know; when your not-father died, the other slaves of his estate were sold off to try to pay off his debts.)_

_On the nights when she is allowed into the main house from the field, your mother takes your hands into her own. She knows you have broken your promise; knows, too, that the calluses and roughness are not your fault. But she presses her thumbs over the spots of blood on your fingertips, always red and dark, glimmering underneath sunlight like half-caught stars._

_She does not ask why you care for the bush. For that you are grateful: you do not have an answer you can give to her._  
  
*

Patty was dying, and she knew it. Life was escaping her grasp no matter how tightly she tried to hold onto it; her hands had been made too weak, perhaps, or it was because they were so full with everything she held onto that she had to let go of something.

Better to let go of life than to release her husband, who loved her so. Better to let go of life than to let little Patsy – still young, though there was an age in her eyes now from witnessing the deaths of two of her siblings – or baby Mary, who was born healthy.

She knew, too, that she was selfish. But Thomas had always indulged her ways instead of scolding her. She should not stop now; not if she wanted him to remember her as she truly was.

He was not here now. She had bidden him to leave, to return to his work, for she did not want him to give up all that he had worked so hard for because of her weakness. She had worked too hard as the governor’s wife to support his ideals to ask him to give it all up for her sake, especially now that the British loomed so close to the coast.

Besides, she knew that he would be here when she died. She would not need to call him; he would know.

When there was a knock on her door, Patty looked up, surprised. Her fingers trembled where she was holding onto her embroidery – she would like to finish one last blanket for baby Mary, something the child could hold and remember her by – before she set it to the side. 

The door opened, but no one stepped in. Patty waited, and blinked in complete surprise when it was Sally’s head that poked through the gap between the door.

“Ma’am,” the child said – for she was still a child, no matter how solemn her carriage remained even after her family had come to Monticello. “May I come in?”

Even if Patty had wanted to speak, she knew she should not. She nodded instead.

Sally’s head retreated. The door creaked as it opened fully. Patty blinked again when she saw what was in the child’s hands.

Flowers. Not just any flowers, but white roses with the edges tinged with red. All of them had been cut and placed in her favourite blue finger-vase in exactly the way she preferred: with the thick leaves and vines that trailed downwards until the vase looked like a fan that bloomed into roses at the tips.

The vase was at least half the size of the girl. Her arms were trembling. Patty pointed a trembling finger towards her nightstand, and Sally nodded. 

Her steps were as steady as they had been on the first day they met. Had that truly only been six years ago? Was this child truly only ten years old?

“I’ve heard from the others that the curtains in your rooms have been drawn for months,” Sally murmured. Even though she had to strain on her tiptoes to place the vase down, her voice did not shake. “I thought you would appreciate the sight of your favourite roses, ma’am.”

She offered Patty a smile with her eyes cast to the floor. “They have bloomed beautifully this year.”

Needle and cloth and embroidery hoop fell to the sheets. Patty’s hand continued to shake as she reached out for the blooms. Even from here, even with her failing eyesight, she knew that Sally was lying. 

The red edges of the blossoms were uneven. When she touched the petals, blood gathered beneath her nails.

Swallowing, she croaked out, “Why?”

Sally did not look up. She did not move. She did nothing but repeat, “I thought you would appreciate the sight of your favourite roses, ma’am.”

There were stories in the South that Patty knew; stories of slaves who gave their lives for their masters, pushing them out of the way of the blades and guns of their rabid compatriots; stories of slaves who served terrible masters but who loved them nonetheless, and worked themselves willingly to death to meet their masters’ impossible standards. Even more popular were the stories of slaves who, when offered freedom by their masters, refused, because they preferred to serve.

Patsy had grown up on those stories: they were some of her father’s favourites; proof that slavery was righteous in the eyes of God and freedom was poisonous. 

But she looked into Sally’s eyes now, and could not believe in those stories. She looked at Sally’s bowed head and imagined the weight of the collar there, invisible but always heavy, and could not think that Sally needed its weight to breathe. 

She looked at Sally and did not know what to think.

“Is this because of your family?” She needed answers. “Is this gratitude?”

“I thought you would appreciate,” Sally said again, in precisely the same tone as before, “the sight of your favourite roses, ma’am.”

Patty could not stand it anymore. Somehow, she found the strength to reach out, grabbing Sally by the wrist and pulling her forward. The girl stumbled forward, knees banging hard against the side of the bed, but Patty did not let go.

” _Why_?”

Finally, finally, Sally lifted her head. When she did, Patty wished that she had not had the strength after all.

For Sally looked at her with her father’s eyes. She looked at Patty with _their_ father’s eyes.

She looked at her with eyes that Patty had seen so often before, in her own mirror.

“I thought you would appreciate the sight of your favourite roses.”

Patty shuddered. She let go, and pressed herself back against the pillow. In the space where her title usually was, she heard, damningly loud in her own ears:

 _Older sister_.

She wanted to deny that claim. She wanted to yell that Sally should not overstep her boundaries this way.

But she could not find the words. She could only stare at those eyes. She could only remember her father, treating her like one of his horses, showing off her teeth; treating her like a wind-up toy, bragging about her capacity for entertainment.

Her breath hitched. She swallowed back a sob. She could not deny it. She could not deny _this_.

There was only one thing left in her mind.

“Will you take care of him for me?”

Sally jerked. Patty squashed down the triumph she felt that she had managed to shock the girl like she had always been shocked; it was petty, and this was far more important.

“Thomas,” she clarified. A cough was growing at the back of her throat, but she swallowed it back. This was important. “I will not leave this task to anyone but you.”

“Ma’am,” Sally started, but Patty shook her head, cutting her off.

“I’m asking you,” she said. A request between sisters. 

When Sally continued to stare silently, Patty swallowed again. “ _Please_ ,” she forced out through a closing throat.

Those eyes went wide. They did not look like their father’s now. They did not look like Patty’s. They did not look like anyone at all.

“Ma’am,” Sally said, the word clearly tripping out of her. Patty watched as she took a breath. “I… I will do my best.”

Patty sank back into her mountain of pillows. She had given Sally her acknowledgement and received a promise in return. That was fair.

“Thank you,” she said, and smiled. That was fair, too. 

“Will you call Thomas in for me?”

Sally looked at her for a moment longer before she nodded. Her chin thudded hard against her chest with a lack of grace Patty had never before witnessed. It was nearly enough to make her smile as she watched Sally head for the door.

Reaching out, she snapped one rose from its stem. Pressing it against her nose, she breathed in deep.

The cough had sunk deeper down in her chest, now, and morphed into something she had grown to know well in the past months. It would not be long, now.

She could hear the clatter of Thomas’s feet approaching her rooms. She breathed in the scent of rose and rusting iron again, letting it bolster her strength.

There was one more promise she needed. One more, and she would allow herself to leave in peace.

***

_An excerpt from a newspaper article published in 1805,  
during the height of the rumours about his keeping of a slave concubine:_

[…] very little is known about the woman who should be our President’s hostess: Martha Jefferson (née Wayles) died a full nineteen years before her husband ascended to Presidency.

What is known of her makes it clear that her early death was a great tragedy. Contemporaries from Virginia named her to be an accomplished musician. The love between Mr Jefferson and Mrs Jefferson is one that is well-known to all those who are acquainted with them […] 

Though President Jefferson has never confirmed it, his promise to Mrs Jefferson to never remarry has been confirmed by many other sources […] 

There is a tale of Mrs Jefferson, clearly apocryphal but so oft repeated that this humble author feels obliged to include it in the article: it is said that, on her deathbed, Mrs Jefferson called a certain slave Sally Hemings to her side. At the time, the slave was the playmate and primary caretaker of her daughter.

One can only imagine a mother’s worry for her child. One can only imagine her heartbreak to have to entrust the care of her daughter to a mere slave.

[…]

***

_Despite your best efforts, the rose bush did not survive the year after her death. By the time he departed for France, it was already nothing more than mulch for the tobacco._

_Before he leaves for France, he builds her a monument. A tall white obelisk, made of cold marble that comes from the same source as the markers for their dead son and daughter. It does not suit her._

_Now you are in Paris._

_You are in Paris and you tell yourself that it is not because of her. You repeat the words and hold them close like nuns hold the rosaries in the convent where her daughters study. It is not because of her. It is not because of her._

_Now you stand outside the door of his rooms – entirely his, with no trace of her whatsoever – to answer his call for you. Now you can feel a stirring beneath your heart when you place your hand there, the stretch of half-formed limbs moving, and you hear the echoes of her voice._

_“I’m asking you. Please.”_

_Unlike her, you have never mastered the skill of lying to yourself._

__

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> Historical inaccuracies: 1) John Wayles was dead before Sally was born; 2) as a result, the Hemings have always belonged to Martha in Sally’s lifetime, and therefore the whole thing in the second part about Martha asking for the Hemings from Wayles could not have happened; 3) Martha and Jefferson married in 1772, before the Declaration of Independence; 4) Martha and Jefferson had six children, not four, though it’s true that only two daughters survived and they only had one son, and 5) Martha died in 1782, not 1783.
> 
> Historical accuracies: 1) Sally’s age, 2) Jefferson did leave for Paris only in 1784, and called Sally and his younger daughter to him a year or so afterwards.
> 
> Once again, writing Sally means I’m striking discomfiting close to the adage of ‘write what you know.'


End file.
